Latest Image From The Crew Of "Flyboys" On Location

by ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. 'Hognose' O'Brien

Michael Patlin of Airpower Aviation, the coordinator of flying for the upcoming (2006) film "Flyboys" that we have previously covered in these pages, sent a new photograph to us (among other friends, fans, and aviation media). If it weren't for an anachronistic bit of concrete pavement and plywood in the foreground, you'd swear it was a young pilot "beating up" the airdrome in 1917.

If the movie action is as good as the stills that Mike's been teasing us with, we Great War fans are going to need the premiere night off --and later, a half-inch on the DVD shelf.

"Somewhere in France..." was Mike's title for the picture, a phrase which instantly recalls the First World War -- it was, of course, how letters home were datelined, for reasons of operational security. The Nieuport 17 is a Warner powered replica owned by Britons Bob Gauld-Galliers and John Day, and flown by Gauld-Galliers. Gauld-Galliers lives near Esher, Surrey, in the "stockbroker belt" of bedroom communities; he built the plane with Day, who lives in Sussex.

The close-up picture shows the airplane in its pre-movie character as a member of the Great War Display Team, an English airshow act, and it's finished in that picture as the mount of  Captain Philip Fletcher Fullard, RFC. Fullard shot down 42 enemy aircraft, 17 of them in "this" Nieuport, B3459. (The airplane has been refinished as a Lafayette Escadrille plane for the movie, of course).

Notice the authentic-looking canvas Besseneau hangars, which were an essential ingredient in Allied air bases of the Great War. The hangars could be knocked down, taken to a new station and erected there, as the demands of military operations, or the movement of the front, required.

I asked Mike where they got the Besseneau hangars, after 90 years? "They (the production company) built them! Movie magic...."

In the past, we've credited Mike Patlin, but we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that others working on the "airplane side" of the movie include Sarah Hanna in the UK (UK aerial coordinator, she sourced the British-based planes), Ken Kellett of Kermit Weeks's Fantasy of Flight attraction in Polk City, FL (who came through with another Warner-powered Nieuport of Kermit's and a Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter), and Andrew King, a Virginia-based pilot and airplane restorer, all of whom were key contributors to brining the skies of ninety years ago back to life.

You'll be able to see Nieuports and other World War One aircraft really fly -- Director Tony Bill, an experienced pilot himself, insisted on real airplanes, not CGI graphics or models -- when Flyboys comes to the big screen in 2006.

Until then, all's quiet on the Western Front. But we'll keep you posted.

FMI: www.flyboysthemovie.com